Sidekicks
by Kalen O
Summary: Zack always wanted to grow up to be Spiderman. Spoilers through The Fix.


**Title:** Sidekicks

**Summary:** Zack always wanted to grow up to be Spiderman.

* * *

It isn't real for Zack until that day in her kitchen.

Sure, the girl he's not so secretly been in love with for the last four years jumps from about two stories up in the air and gets up without a scratch, and that's amazing and weird and a little creepy - but mostly it's just really fucking cool.

And sure, she's surrounded by this whole conspiracy thing involving a dead cheerleader, her weirdo dad and some black dude from Tahiti or wherever who erased his mind, and that's scary and weird and a lot creepy – but again, also really fucking cool. Especially considering the biggest secrets those loser jocks at school have to keep just involve what girls they cheated on when and with who. Whom. Whatever.

But still, video proof of her creepy fucking coolness notwithstanding, it doesn't sink in until that day in the kitchen, standing next to her with her dad five feet away. Just watching them. Watching Bizarro Dad casually ask Claire about manatees and whatthefuckever, and watching her just chatter away right back, and its not creepy cool anymore, its just creepy. Zack feels like he's watching a tennis match, the way his head keeps going back and forth from one of them to the other, and he's giving away the whole show right there. But it shouldn't matter, because can't they both see the other's lying through their teeth? And they can, he's pretty sure, and they keep doing it, smiling all the while, and that's the creepiest thing of all.

"How are you, Zachary? I feel as though I haven't seen you here in a while," Bizarro Dad had said and he can't even remember what he mumbled in response. But Bennett the elder's eyes narrow behind his glasses and he can't help but feel like he's failed some kind of test, failed Claire somehow. So when she tells him to go wait for him in her room, he's more than happy to flee. Even if she does look a little surprised that she has to remind him where her room is.

Sinking into her desk chair and looking around at all her shit, her stuffed animals and pictures and everything else crammed into way too little space, that's when it really hits him. He's been here before, he knows he has, but he doesn't remember. Probably never will. They stole his fucking _mind_. What if they do it again? What's to stop them? What if they decide since it didn't take the first time, they have to be more thorough the next time, and he winds up as dead as Jackie the cheerleader?

Then Claire's there, and he makes a joke about cutting it close, he makes a fucking _joke_ and shit, but something must have broken when Jamaica man fiddled with his brain chemistry, because he just made a fucking joke when the sane response was supposed to be piss his pants, run and hide, and possibly fake his own death. He doesn't even remember what all else they say, what else they talk about, Claire could have stripped naked and had hot naked sex with him and he wouldn't have – okay, never mind, _that_ he would have remembered, but still. He's eternally grateful to her when she tells him to just go home, because he didn't want to be the one to suggest it. He didn't want to just leave her, even though it was beyond crystal clear at that point that she'd chosen the wrong guy to confide in. He was just such a fucking pussy, dammit, he practically bolted the second she said go.

And he gets home, to his own room, to his own bed, and he flops down on it and presses his palms so hard against his face he's seeing white spots. And Jesus, he could have _died_ today, okay, so no, probably not, that was a little over the top, but still. Zack never wants to go over there again, never wants to see Claire's creepy Bizzaro dad and yet he knows he will, so he makes a mental note to go ahead and puke before hand next time. Because Claire chose him, to confide in, and he loves her for it and he hates her for it. Because she chose _him_, and that's amazing, and unbelievable, and…and….and really gets in the way of the whole running and hiding and faking his own death.

But in his defense, at least she's the amazing invulnerable cheerleader girl. What're they going to do, shoot her? Whereas dead means dead for him.

And lying there on his bed, that's when it finally hits him. And he goes to his closet and he yanks out his comics, box after box of them until he's just sitting on the floor, surrounded by a pile of them. Because this isn't a comic book story. It's really not, no matter how much he's been thinking it is, with Claire's superpowers and Bahama guys with mindwipes and creepy conspiracy Dad.

And he takes them downstairs, box after box of them, and he dumps them in the trash. And his mom, his amazing, boring, _normal_ mom looks at him kinda funny, because she's been trying to get him to throw those out for years. But she doesn't say anything, probably doesn't want to change his mind by accident, even though she couldn't if she wanted to. Just throwing out some old junk, he tells her fake cheerfully, and tromps back up to his room.

Because superpowers may be real but this still isn't a comic book story. It's real life. And in real life, it isn't the video geeks with a heart of gold that gets bitten by the radioactive spider. It's the cheerleader.

The video geek just gets to be the sidekick.


End file.
